title: Children's marking of verbal -s by nonmainstream English dialect and clinical status.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Children's marking of verbal -s was examined by their dialect (African American English [AAE] vs. Southern White English [SWE]) and clinical status (specific language impairment [SLI] vs. typically developing [TD]) and as a function of 4 linguistic variables (verb regularity, negation, expression of a habitual activity, and expression of historical present tense).
  
  
  METHODS
  The data were language samples from 57 six-year-olds who varied by their dialect and clinical status (AAE: SLI = 14, TD = 12; SWE: SLI = 12, TD = 19).
  
  
  RESULTS
  The AAE groups produced lower rates of marking than did the SWE groups, and the SWE SLI group produced lower rates of marking than did the SWE TD group. Although low numbers of verb contexts made it difficult to evaluate the linguistic variables, there was evidence of their influence, especially for verb regularity and negation. The direction and magnitude of the effects were often (but not always) consistent with what has been described in the adult dialect literature.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Verbal -s can be used to help distinguish children with and without SLI in SWE but not in AAE. Clinicians can apply these findings to other varieties of AAE and SWE and other dialects by considering rates of marking and the effects of linguistic variables on marking.
authors.affiliation: Correspondence to Lesli H. Cleveland: lcleveland@ewu.edu.
authors.forename: Lesli H
authors.initials: LH
authors.lastname: Cleveland
authors.forename: Janna B
authors.initials: JB
authors.lastname: Oetting
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001741:Black or African American; D002648:Child; D002663:Child Language; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D007805:Language Development Disorders; D008037:Linguistics; D008297:Male; D010700:Phonetics; D014705:Verbal Behavior; D044465:White People
keywords: English dialects; specific language impairment; verbal –s